Happy Birthday
27 · August · 2026
Mum, happy birthday.
Almost everything good about the way we live, we got from you. How to make a room feel like somewhere you want to stay. How to feed people properly. How to notice that something is beautiful and then actually say so.
You’ve never made a fuss about any of it. You quietly built the kind of family that likes being together, then made sure there was always somewhere lovely to do it and something excellent to eat when we arrived.
And you never stop making things — gardens, rooms, dinners, plans. It’s catching. Every one of us is braver about making things because of you.
So: a card with a garden in it. Tap everything. It all does something.
Nothing here planted itself
Twelve plots, twelve of us. Tap the soil and see who comes up.
0 of 12 planted
You did exactly this with family. Every one of us came up in your garden.
You’ve never met a space you couldn’t improve
You see the finished thing years before anyone else in the room does. Pick a mood and watch the terrace agree with you.
Limewash
Every house you’ve lived in has ended up looking like it was always meant to be that way. That is a real skill, and you make it look natural and effortless.
A Saturday in Lisbon, built around you
You have the capacity for endless love and care, and you support us in everything we do… and we wanted to do the same for you; by treating you to a long lunch in Lisbon, bookended with another of your passions — bargain hunting!
So we’ve built you a whole day of it. It has to be a Saturday — the flea market only opens twice a week, but the rest is negotiable.
- Feira da LadraThe flea market on the hill, from ten. Antiques, old hand-painted azulejos, jewellery, racks of secondhand everything. Wear the comfortable shoes.
- Dona AjudaThe charity shop in the old Rato market hall — properly hung, properly sorted, and everything you spend goes to their work.
- A long lunch in Príncipe RealBy the big supported cedar. Seventy-five minutes, and this is the part nobody is allowed to rush.
- A Fábrica dos ChapéusHats made on site. They work out what suits your face and will tell you honestly when something doesn’t. More a fitting than a shop.
- Pastelaria BenardChandeliers, faded grandeur, open since 1868, and a fraction of the crush next door. The birthday stop.
- Ás de EspadasCurated vintage down a lane towards Rossio. Seventies blouses, floral dresses, a small designer rail.
- Conserveira de LisboaFamily-run since 1930, every tin still wrapped by hand in paper.
Then a glass of wine at Terreiro do Paço at about quarter to five, with the river going past.
Two taxis, two kilometres of walking, all of it downhill. Nothing is fixed — drop anything, linger anywhere. Selin built it and there’s a printed copy coming with us.
Something for the table
Beautiful people deserve beautiful things. We found a set of handmade porcelain — plates and cups — and the moment we saw it we thought of you: it belongs in your kind of light, on your kind of table, in the garden you’ve made out there.
It’s at home in the UK at the moment, waiting for us. We didn’t want to trust it to a courier, so it’s coming with us — hand-delivered to Portugal as soon as we can get there.
Consider this the picture on the box.
Plant something
Choose what you fancy, tap along the trough to plant it, then water. No slugs, no watering rota, and nothing that dies the moment you go away for a week.
Pick something, then tap along the trough.
Have a wonderful day. Give Dad a kiss from us, and tell Max he is remarkably handsome for a man of his age.
Dad and Max are interchangeable here.
All of it, because of you.
Love, Luke & Selin
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